Amoretti: Sonnet 42 lyrics
by Edmund Spenser
The love which me so cruelly tormenteth,
So pleasing is in my extreamest paine:
that all the more my sorrow it augmenteth,
the more I love and doe embrace my bane.
Ne doe I wish (for wishing were but vaine)
to be acquit from my continuall smart:
but joy her thrall for ever to remayne,
and yield for pledge my poore captyved hart;
The which that it from her may never start,
let her, yf please her, bynd with adamant chayne:
and from all wandring loves which mote pervart,
his safe assurance strongly it restrayne.
Onely let her abstaine from cruelty,
and doe me not before my time to dy.